What does it mean to live on the Equator?

1. The sun comes up about 6:00 and goes down about 6:00 every day and the sunsets at our beach (a 5 min drive or 20 minute walk) are fabulous!


2. The waves seem to come straight into the beach, not at an angle, like in California.

2. For the first three months of our mission, the weather was mild. However, the wet season has hit and it has hit with a vengeance! This is our home! The water was so high it came up across the porch and into the house. The road in front of our home… and then the calm after the storm.





And now it is HOT & HUMID!!!!!!
But it is all part of the adventure and we are loving it!

Our New Home

We have a new home. We have a 14 month lease and will probably be here for the rest of our mission. Our other home was OK, but it was expensive. We decided to look for something else. We spent several afternoons looking at homes. We looked at at least 20 homes before we found this and feel that it it one of our special blessings.

We have a big wall and locked gates, which gives good security.
We also have bars on the doors and the windows, but as you can see from the picture at the top, it still looks nice. We have a big room off the kitchen with dining area at one end, and then room for our sofa & Chairs... and still have room for a Ping Pong Table, if we had one. Even the bathrooms are nice!

We have 3 bedrooms, and supposedly they are finishing off another bedroom behind the garage. Besides our nice big Master bedroom, we have one that we use for our office and one for our guest room for when President Headlee or other church guests come to town. We will use the bedroom behind the garage for Elders, as needed. (Sick, etc). Our kitchen is lovely, and one of the nicest in the Congo.
The home is brand new, and they are still working on finishing it up. We are a little ways out of town, but only 6 minutes from the airport and 10 minutes from church, if no traffic. We are very happy with our home, and hope to make many special memories here.

Odds & Ends....

We live on the Atlantic Ocean. We are only about a 5 minute drive from the beach and we enjoy going down to walk or go out to eat for dinner on the water.
This is our "pet" that lives in our pump cabinet close to our front door. We have named him Connor after our cute red-headed grandson.

We had a General Authority, Elder Watson, and his wife stay with us for 2 nights. He is one of the Area Authorities over Africa. They were touring the mission and stopped here for a Zone Conference. They were wonderful and very interesting people. He served 35 years as the secretary to the First Presidency of the Church. He was the one that used to read the statistical reports for General Conference. His stories about the prophets were wonderful and we enjoyed having them with us.

We did have lots of mosquitoes when we first came. However, Ed has eradicated the problem! Every night he would climb on the bed, or a chair, and anything that hinted at being a mosquitoes was crushed or sprayed. We have almost no mosquitoes in our house anymore!

“Real estate agent” missionaries

July 20 (Ongoing Process for Now)

We are bursting out of the seams at our chapel. We need a new building. The mission president asked Ed and I to spearhead the search. We walked all the areas within the parameters. 99% of the buildings were awful! If a place was decent, and nobody was around to ask about the building, we would leave a note we printed up.
The only one that I found that was for rent was an old school building. I tried to convince people that my husband could make any "dump" wonderful. Ed was horrified I would even consider it.

After looking, for days and days, we had the branch presidents make an announcement during their Sacrament Meetings that we were looking for a chapel site within certain parameters. We were praying and looking for a miracle.

That week we got a call from one of the members who had a friend with an apartment house who is leaving for an extended time and said he would like to rent the entire building to one group, so he didn’t need to worry about it while he was gone. Dad & the Zone Leader went right over and called the Branch President to see how he felt about it. It was very exciting. We now are just waiting for the approval from temporal affairs from the area. Hopefully they will get someone here this week, so we won’t lose it.

We also had to find 2 new homes for the elders. President Headlee, the mission president, said that he wanted them to live closer to their sectors. Their sectors are in extremely humble surroundings, which make it somewhat difficult to find a house that is up to my standards. I insisted that we were going to find something, within the budget, nice enough that the elders wouldn’t dread going home too at night. President Headlee also wanted a generator for when the power goes off. Not only would a generator allow electricity to see, but it would also run the pump so they could have water.

There is no Craig’s List or want ads, but they do occasionally write homes for rent on a neighborhood blackboard.
We found one house on the second day of looking. But we spent several more days driving through the sectors and looking for the second one. Each morning we would pray. I kept singing the primary song combined with the scripture “I will go, I will do, the things the Lord commands… For we know the Lord giveth no commandments save he shall prepare a way for them.” We finally found a black board that had several homes listed on it. Most of them were like 50,000 CEFAS ($100 per month). I knew they would be dives. One of them said 200,000 CEFAS ($400 per month). Our budget was 300,000 to 400,000 Cefas.

We finally found a found a brand-new, 3-bedroom home with a big wall around it right in the middle of a very humble area, and the neighborhood dumps. This house didn’t have a generator, but when we went to see it, it was perfect. The owners agreed to put in a generator (an extra 150,000 CEFAS for the first 2 years) and to put screens all around the house, (to keep the mosquitoes out). It won’t be finished for a couple more weeks, but it should be great.

We have moved all the elders out of the apartment behind us and into their own home. The other four moved in with us, until their home is finished. It actually isn’t bad having them here. They bring a special spirit into our home. They faithfully sing songs before their study time, and in the evening when they get home to end their days. We hear them through their closed doors, and it touches us deeply.

Our new city: Pointe Noire!

WOW! We are really here. Today we bore our testimonies in French! I don't know where to start.

First of all, a little about Pointe Noire. Our city is a "city" in that there are lots of people and lots of taxis and traffic. However, there are literally only about half a dozen buildings that are taller than 4 stories. There are a few main paved roads. All the other "roads" are made of sand and are very, very bumpy! (Like 2 & 3 foot deep wash outs). There are a few grocery stores (small) and everything else seems to be very small shops, from the size of our kids bathroom to the size of our living room. Things are stuffed into them!
The prices are usually very expensive (except for dried fish and rice, which the Africans live on.)
We have found OK frozen chicken (with bones and skin on), OK Orange Juice (no pulp), jelly, good butter and fabulous baguettes (long skinny loaves of bread baked fresh all day with a crispy crust that Dad loves). They don't have fresh milk, so we have the choice of powdered milk or something like a canned milk. I have gotten used to the milk, but Dad is still trying. The sugar & flour come in little 2 pound bags. There is good jelly. We had all the Elders over on P-Day to watch a temple movie, and for a treat we had peanut butter and jelly on baguettes. They hadn't had peanut butter for a long time, so it was a big hit.

Most of the people live in very, very, very humble homes. These photos are of the neighborhood 4 of the elders live in. They have one of the few homes in the area with water and power.
Most of them are smaller than one of our kids bedrooms with no electricity or running water. They have outhouses with a deep hole in the ground... and they carry their water from the nearest well. I haven't been in one of them yet, but when I have, I will give you more details. The homes are mostly made out of corrugated tin and some are cinder block or left over wood. They are built with a common wall. Absolutely no building codes here!!!